By blog January 6, 2015 - 10:45am

Once the big day has been and gone, we’re all left feeling a little guilty about our indulgences. But the road to redemption doesn’t have to involve harsh crash diets and crazy gym routines. Juicing offers a healthy and less painful option to the traditional fasts and fads in the New Year.

It may be a firm favorite amongst celebs, but that doesn’t mean that juicing is a regime beyond that of your average Joe or Joan. In fact, the New Year is the perfect time to get yourself feeling back to your healthy, normal self with a selection of fresh juices to balance out those stodgy meals you succumbed to during the party season.

Rather than punishing yourself with grueling training routines and crash diets, juicing presents an opportunity to enhance your diet and make you feel energized and healthy without any of those painful sacrifices.

Don’t believe that just because you aren’t eating meat, dairy or breads that you can’t get all the goodness you need as part of a balanced diet. There are plenty of fruits and vegetables that include not only vitamins and minerals but proteins and fats, too.
Should I be detoxing, dieting or supplementing with juices?
The popularity of juicing stems from the fact that it makes getting the goodness you need in your diet easier to manage. Rather than a miracle cure it simply offers convenience on a number of levels. Depending on what your aims are for the early months of 2015, you can use juicing in a number of ways.
The detox
Rather than the stereotypical detoxes that strip out almost anything nutritious or flavor some from a diet, juicing detoxes focus instead on getting good sustenance into the body.

1-day, 3-day and 7-day juicing detoxes are now incredibly popular as a way of making balanced nutrient and calorie intake more convenient. If your aim is to lose pounds and feel energized faster, then giving up coffee, heavy foods and focusing on juices and water is a terrific solution. Browse online and the results of juice detoxes aren’t hard to find.
The diet
For most of us, the idea of living on nothing but juice for any longer than a week is a little hard to stomach. But for those who have a significant amount of weight to lose, using juices to replace one or two meals a day can be incredibly effective in cutting calories and increasing nutrient intake without any hassle.

Even exchanging your sugary cereal or jam on toast for a juice can make a difference over the course of a month.

Alternatively, cutting down on portion size and incorporating juices between meals can be a great way to shed weight without struggling with that horrible ‘empty stomach’ feeling often associated with dieting.
The supplement
Even the healthiest, most active people would admit that there is room for more fruit and veg in their diet. By swapping that morning coffee or afternoon can of fizzy pop for a juice, anyone can boost their nutrient intake with ease.

If this is your plan for 2015, one handy tip is to opt for a cold press juicer over a traditional centrifugal juicer. Cold press juicers like the Oscar NEO or Hurom 700 Boss juicer here do not generate heat during the squeezing. This helps to keep the juice fresher for longer – meaning you can bottle it and take it to work rather than being forced to drink it the minute you’ve produced it.